Den of thieves

Chapter Thirty-Two

It took Malden the better part of the day to scrub the shit out of his clothes. He couldn’t afford to hire a washerwoman, and he certainly didn’t want to answer any questions she might have had, so he did it himself down by the river Skrait, rubbing his cloak against smooth rocks until its color was almost back to normal and it didn’t stink. When the time came, he told himself-when he was in Cutbill’s firm employ, and able to earn for himself-he would never have to wash his own clothes again.

Perhaps it would happen tonight.

He had been very worried after leaving Castle Hill that he might be arrested at any moment. The torturer got a good look at his face, after all, and could have reported his description to the watch. So he had spent the predawn hours slinking from one darkened part of the city to the next, spying on every cloak-of-eyes he could find, watching them to see if they were alerted and searching for a thief. And they had been-a woman, in a velvet cloak, in a little boat. Cythera. They were looking for Cythera.

Which perhaps explained why she had not been waiting for him when he left the pipe and unceremoniously fell into the filthy river. He supposed he could not blame her for fleeing once the guards spotted her. In the midst of the confusion in the palace above, they would be unlikely to listen to whatever story she spun for them. She could have ended up in the strap herself.

He would just have to make contact with her or with Bikker somehow, and make proper arrangements for handing over the crown. Which might be difficult if they were being sought by the watch-most likely they would have gone to ground. Still, he possessed ways to find them the authorities lacked. It would just take a little digging.

On his way back from the river he decided, though, that he could afford to rest and lie low for a day. He was exhausted from his nocturnal jaunt, and his hands ached and desperately needed to be idle for a while. He was also starving, as he hadn’t eaten since the day before.

So he took his time heading home. Down in his part of the Stink, the river ran flat and wide through a district of fishermen’s homes, all built on stilts to weather the annual springtime flood. He climbed up a bank thick with salt grass, where coracles and punts lay overturned, the tar between their timbers softening in the sun. The fishermen sat in their boats, to keep them from being stolen, waiting for the tide to turn. In the meantime they laughed and joked amongst themselves as they repaired their nets with thick, scarred fingers. They eyed him warily but without comment. Surely it wasn’t the first time they’d seen a furtive figure, his clothes drenched with river water, come up the bank and slinking away in the early morning light. He hoped it happened often enough they wouldn’t remember him when he was gone.

A short flight of stairs brought Malden up to the high street, where he bought a day-old loaf and three gulps of wine ladled out of a barrel. It was better fare than he often ate, but he was hungry enough to spend the extra coin. He picked apart the bread as he wended his way up the street, careful not to step in anything that might ruin his newly clean shoes. The houses here leaned over the roadway, their upper stories built out so far they were nearly touching. Even in the midday the shadows were thick under the eaves. He sat for a while on a horse trough to finish the meal, and watched the comings and goings of his neighbors.

The people of the Stink dressed plainly, and few among them had clean faces-in fact, most bore the pockmarks of long-healed disease, or other signs of bad diet and unsanitary living. None of them could read or write, and by the age of twenty-five even the most comely of girls looked old and stooped.

“ ’Ware below,” someone shouted from above his head, and a cobbler’s apprentice in the street had to dodge a cascade of garbage and filth poured out a second floor window. His leap sent him sprawling into a sawyer and they both went down in a heap, the woodchopper’s load of firewood spilling out onto the cobbles. The man pulled the boy’s ears for that, and demanded that he help pick up the wood, but the boy merely made a rude gesture and hurried on. Across the street a goodwife stepped out into her dooryard, her face flushed from the heat in her kitchen. She fanned herself with her apron for a moment, then hobbled back inside and back to her endless tasks. She had to work constantly to feed her family, and to have enough left over to sell so she and her husband could make the rent.

These people were miserable, and their lives meant nothing. Malden had never felt like one of them, even if he lived among them. And yet he wondered, as he often did, what his life could have been had he tried to be an honest man.

Not, of course, that he’d had much choice in the matter. The son of a whore-the bastard son of a whore-could never rise far. He had learned both letters and figures as a child, and kept the books for his mother’s house, but such skills were useless to one of his station. No merchant would ever have trusted him to add up accounts. By the time he’d left the brothel, he was too old to apprentice in any lucrative trade. He could have given himself over to unskilled labor, and broken his back unloading ships or carrying goods to market for farmers too poor to own a cart. He thought he would not have lasted long at that business, though. He would have turned to drink, to soothe his sore muscles, and wasted that tiny pittance of money he earned.

He finished the last of his bread and got up again. He headed up a side street, a narrow, winding passage between two closes, piles of houses built around tiny, stinking courtyards full of livestock. He heard voices from all around him, snatches of conversation dripping from every window thrown open to catch a breath of air. Hundreds of people lived in the closes, pressed into a space the size of a rich man’s parlor. Some of the houses were six stories high. Imagine, he thought, to every day go down to the river to fetch water and bring it back up all those stairs. He saw in his mind’s eye an endless course of pails, sloshing and losing a bit of their contents with every step they climbed, a river of water moving up and down inside those tall houses every day. And every pail needed a poor blighter to carry it.

He shook his head and hurried up the street. His own room was in the next block over, above a waxchandler’s shop. The shop turned out candles, whole barrels full of them every day made of beef tallow that stank when it burned or more expensive and reliable beeswax. His room stank always of paraffin, and the stairs leading to it were used to store extra spools of wicking and blocks of rancid tallow. Still, the room at the top of those stairs was warm all winter from the heat of the wax kettles underneath, and he didn’t have to share with anyone else. He headed up the exterior stairs to his door and lifted the latch, thinking only of his bed. It was a simple mattress stuffed with straw and sagging in a frame of ropes. He wondered if he would care enough to tighten them before he climbed inside. He wondered how long he would stay awake once his head touched the scratchy sheets.

He hurried inside and closed the shutters. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept through an afternoon, wishing to be rested for the night to come. Yes, just a few hours with his head down and then Thief. Hearken to me, thief.

The damned crown!

When he first touched it, it had spoken to him. During his escape from the dungeons it had mostly been quiet, but only because there was enough noise to drown out its voice. Now, when his room was still, when he was alone with his thoughts and his exhaustion, he could hear it whisper to him.

It never stopped.

Thief, I can help you. I can save you from all dangers. Simply listen to what I have to say. Thief! Listen to me!

Malden stormed over to the middle of the room, where he’d hidden the crown beneath the loose floorboards. He stamped on the spot, hard enough he thought he might stave in the boards and ruin his hiding place. Like a man pounding on the floor to tell his downstairs neighbors they are too loud.

I’ve seen what you desire, thief. And I can help you get it. I ask only one thing. Place me upon your head.

His stomping was of no use. The damned thing would be quiet just long enough to let him crawl into his bed. Then, before he could even close his eyes, it would speak again, inside his head where he could not block it out.

Thief, put me on. Place me on your head and I shall tell you secrets. Thief, I can tell you where treasure is buried. I can tell you how to make wealth out of thin air, how to acquire all the riches you desire. Thief! I can make you free!

The thing had hardly stopped talking since he stole it.

And much worse-he was starting to believe the things it said.

All he had to do was put it on his head. All he had to do was wear it for just a moment and it would tell him anything he wanted to know. It would tell him why Bikker and Cythera wanted it so badly. It would teach him all the secrets of the Burgrave.

And so much more, thief. I know the way to a woman’s heart. The witch’s daughter can be yours, thief. I can make her obey your every command. I can make her long for you until her body aches for your touch. Just put me on.

The crown wouldn’t let him get a wink of sleep. Long before dark he surrendered. Not to its suggestions, of course, but to the fact that he would go out again, as tired as he was, and find Bikker or Cythera immediately.

It couldn’t wait another hour.